DoubleClick's “Boomerang” is a service for advertisers that places a cookie on computers of visitors to an advertiser's site for the purpose of finding those visitors on other sites where DoubleClick is the ad server (“ad” is short for advertisement). When the same visitors are found on those other sites, additional advertiser's ads are served to them by the DoubleClick ad sever or by the advertiser's ad server following a redirect from the DoubleClick ad server.
The only server that can read a cookie on a user's computer is a server operating under the same domain as the server that placed the cookie on a user's computer to begin with. In other words, a cookie placed by a server operating under one domain cannot be read by another server working under a separate domain. That is why the advertiser cannot expect to place a cookie of its own (e.g., ford.com cookie) on a visitor to its site and then later expect the DoubleClick ad server (doubleclick.com) to be able to recognize the visitor when that visitor is visiting sites where DoubleClick serves ads by reading the ford.com cookies. Only a server operating under the DoubleClick domain can read a cookie placed by a server operating under the DoubleClick domain. So, DoubleClick needs to place a doubleclick.com cookie on visitors to the ford.com site for DoubleClick to later find those visitors within other sites, i.e., where the DoubleClick ad server is used to serve ads.
For a site to have its ad served by an ASP-hosted ad server, such as the one operated by DoubleClick, the site needs to redirect visitors from the site to the DoubleClick ad server, to fetch the ad from the server. Following the redirect from the site, the visitor accesses the DoubleClick ad server. Because the DoubleClick server is operating under the DoubleClick domain, it can read the DoubleClick cookie or cookies and then recognize that it encountered the same visitor in the past. In this example, the DoubleClick ad server recognizes the visitor as someone who visited the ford.com site.
AlmondNet, Tacoda, RevenueScience, and other companies (herein “BT companies”; “BT” stands for behavioral targeting) specialize in targeting ads based on observed behavior of sites' visitors. To record a visitor's observed behavior, a BT company places a cookie (or cookies) on the computers of visitors to specific sections of a publisher's website or on the computers of visitors of the publisher who conducted a specific action such as search, click content, click an ad, make a phone call, request information, acquire a product, etc.
The placement of cookies allows those publishers or the BT company itself to sell ads to advertisers. Those ads will be presented to the profiled visitors when they are found later on the same site or on other sites. Such sites can be either a site where the BT company's software is used or a site where the BT company has bought media. The BT company may buy the media on behalf of itself or on behalf of the publisher, who is interested in delivering ads to its audience outside the publisher's site.
Although a BT company (AlmondNet, Tacoda, RevenueScience, etc.) acts as an agent that places cookies on the computers of publisher's visitors for the purpose of delivering targeted ads to the publisher's visitors on other sites, the publisher can work without an agent and place cookies or tags on the computers of the publisher's own visitors for the purpose of delivering ads to those visitors on other sites where the publisher buys ad space. Such a publisher, acting without an agent, is also included in the definition of a BT company.
A publisher may also be referred to as a “profile supplier” when it transfers profile information, such as behavioral information, demographic information, etc., to a BT company. Therefore, a publisher that is a BT company may also be its own profile supplier. Furthermore, although the name “BT company” implies the targeting of ads is based on collected behavioral profiles, a BT company may also collect other kinds of profile information, such as demographic information or user-provided information, and target ads to those visitors wherever found based on the collected profile information.
Another kind of a BT company is a company that has software installed on a person's computer, such as toolbar software, desktop search software, weather software, or any kind of software that is used by the computer's user. Such software also monitors the computer user's visits to different publishers' sites and media properties and collects profile information about the computer user for the purpose of delivering ads to the user within ad space of sites and media properties that the user visits based on the collected profiles.
A BT company using software installed on a user's computer does not need the cooperation of a visited media property to collect information about the visitor's visit because that software monitors whatever the user is doing on his or her computer. A BT company that has software installed on a user's computer is therefore its own profile supplier. Such software can place a cookie or another kind of tag on the user's computer. Because the software is installed on the user's computer, it can write cookies readable by any domain. That means that the BT company can place a tag or cookie of a second media property, if the BT company would like the second media property to recognize the visitor when the visitor visits that second media property site, by simply having the software place a cookie operating under the domain of the second property on the visitor's computer. The software may also report the collected profiles to a central server of the BT company.
The central server may also tag the visitor or arrange for the visitor to be tagged by operators of other media properties. A BT company can place a cookie on a site's section when a visitor's computer visits that section, if a code of the company was integrated into the page of that section by the site that owns the page. The code (e.g., HTML or Java) redirects to the BT company's server all visitors to the page. Also, in the case that the BT company is the publisher itself, the publisher will simply “cookie” (by itself) all visitors that either read a specific content, search, click, ask for information, make a phone call, etc.
The BT company's server, which either gave the site a unique code for a page, received from the page its URL, or received access to the page's content that could be analyzed by the BT company's server, etc., identifies the content read by the page's visitor, the keyword searched for by the user, an ad clicked on the page, a content item clicked on the page, a phone call that was made that was initiated from the page, information that was requested, or a product was acquired, etc. The content read by the page visitor could be identified by the BT company's server whether the content was reported by the site or whether the content was identified following the analysis of the page. The server then places a cookie on the user's computer indicating what content was read by the visitor on the page, what keyword was searched for by the user, or what ad was clicked on the page, etc. The placed cookie indicates that information (1) in the cookie per se, (2) in a central database operated by the server where the cookie ID is used as a record finder, or (3) both in the cookie and in the database.
Although the above description relates to cookies, a cookie is only one example of a possible tag. A tag generally is a unique identifier used to mark a person electronically visiting a media property, such as a web site, TV channel, radio show, or the like, using a computer, a mobile device, a TV set, a TV set top box, or any other device.
The tag is used for the purpose of delivering additional ads to a visitor to one media property when that visitor is found later on other media properties, based on the visitor's profile collected on the first media property. The profile could be the observed behavior of the visitor on the media property, demographic information collected on the media property, profile information provided by the visitor to the media property, etc. The profile could be made available to the other media properties.
Because the purpose of the tag is to enable the delivery of additional ads on other media properties visited by the visitor, and because the delivery of an ad requires only control of the ad space and not necessarily control of the entire media property visited by the visitor, a media property (in the present context) can also be defined as any equipment that controls an ad space viewed by a visitor, including a web site, an ad network's site (where the ad network represents the ad space of different sites), a TV program, some of the ad space within TV programs or TV channels (represented by a cable company), a TV network, or any ad space for which an entity is allowed to sell an advertisement and deliver it within the ad space; whether the ad space is owned by that entity, or whether the entity pays the owner of the ad space when using its ad space to deliver an ad sold by the entity. Ad space can be on a web site, in a TV program, in a text message, in a radio show, in any broadcasted material, in any streaming video or audio, etc. An ad space can be a fixed position on a page, or the ad space can be made available by a web site to an ad network (for example) only when the web site did not sell all of the site's ad inventory and therefore wishes to make some of the inventory available to the ad network.
In the case of a media property controlling an ad space viewed by a visitor, a specific ad space on a page might be controlled only temporarily. For example, in the case of the web site that did not sell all the ad impressions available to be delivered within an ad space on a page and therefore makes the unsold ad space available to the ad network to fill, the ad network will have temporary control of the ad space, i.e., when that ad space is given to it by the web site. Once the site redirects the ad space on the page to the ad network (so the ad network could fill the ad space with an ad sold by the ad network), the ad network controls the ad space and has access to the visitor viewing the ad space that was redirected to the ad network by the site, and therefore the ad network's equipment is considered a media property, as it controls an ad space viewed by a visitor.
The tag can be placed on the device used by the user to access the first media property where the user's profile was collected (in case of observed behavior, that behavior can be reading a specific content, searching, clicking an ad or content, making a phone call, asking for product information, acquiring a product, or taking any other kind of action). A tag placed on the device (1) could be read only by a server operating under the same domain as the server that placed the tag on the device to begin with as in the case of a cookie for example, (2) could be placed on the device when the user visited the first media property, and then the tag can be read by any second media property visited by the visitor, or (3) could be encrypted and, while accessed by any second media property visited by the visitor, the tag could be deciphered only by second media property computers that received the deciphering code from the first media property. In case of a tag placed by software installed on a user's computer, the tag could be whatever the software wants it to be, including a cookie of any domain.
A tag does not have to be placed on the user's device. A tag can also be used in a central database of a BT company or a central database of any second media property visited by the visitor, where the tag could be a unique identifier either of the device or of the user. In the case where the tag identifies the device, the tag might denote an IP address, a phone number, a device's manufacturer serial number, etc. A cookie placed on the device can also uniquely identify the device and the cookie therefore can be used as a tag in a central database. In the case where the tag identifies the user, the tag might denote the username and password used to access a media property, a user's name and address, a user's e-mail, a user's social security number, or any other personal identifiable information.
As already mentioned, the observed behavior of a visitor to a first media property is referred to as profile information about a specific visitor. A visitor's profile might be enhanced by the visitors' observed behavior on other media properties or by other profile information collected on other media properties.
A visitor's profile can be represented by a unique tag, or the profile can be stored with the tag, whether the tag is placed on the device, on a central database, or both. For example, the profile can be stored within a cookie (tag) on a visitor's device, or the profile can be stored in a central database where the tag connected to the profile is used as a unique identifier of the visitor's device or of the visitor personally. The profile can also be saved on both the device and a central database.
Some 50% to 80% of the ad space on the Internet is considered difficult to monetize, as it is located next to content that tends to be more generalized, such as general news, web based e-mails, instant messages, music or files downloading sites, and software. Advertisers are not willing to pay a high price for delivering an ad to visitors of such sites, as they do not know how many of those sites' visitors are potential clients for their products and services. By contrast, advertisers prefer the placement of ads on dedicated content sites, such as a travel site. For example, an airline is willing to pay a high price per ad on a travel site, as it knows that the ad will be delivered to people who are currently searching for flying tickets. The same is true for TV, where a significant proportion of the ad space is within TV programs where the audience is heterogeneous. It is also true for radio shows and other kind of media.
Using profiles for the delivery of targeted ads within the above-described low-value ad space can turn the low-value ad space into high-value ad space by delivering ads to users that are based on previously collected profiles of the users, rather than ads that are related to the content on the page they are viewing. For example, a “car insurance” related ad, delivered to a person who yesterday searched for “car insurance” within the ad space of a general news page the person is currently reading, will be much more relevant to the person than an ad related to the general news he or she is reading.
The BT companies are described above as collecting profiles and later delivering ads to the profiled visitors when found on other sites. The ads delivered by the BT company to the profiled visitors are either sold by the BT company, which pays royalties to the profile suppliers that provided it with profiles whenever ads presented to their audience generate revenues, or paid for by a publisher that is interested in delivering ads to its own audience outside its site and is paying the BT company to find its audience on other sites. As described, the publisher might be the BT company itself.
In addition, where the collected profiles are mainly used to deliver targeted ads within low-value ad space that is acquired from low-value ad space owners, and the ads are delivered by the BT company, there is also the opportunity to make the collected profiles available to low-value ad space owners, because, instead of selling their low-value ad space to the profile owners, such ad space owners would prefer to monetize their low-value ad space better by themselves, by using the collected profiles to sell targeted ads, delivered to the profiled visitors when found within such low-value ad space.
A low-value ad space owner could be any media property owner, whether it owns a web site, a TV program, a radio show, or any other media property. Also, “low-value” ad space is a relative term. Because ad space prices are usually a function of the content next to the ad space, if a profile-based ad garners a higher price for the ad space owner than an ad based on the adjacent content, then the ad space value is considered “low value” (i.e., in relative terms, relative to the price the ad space will garner if used for delivery of a profile-based ad).
As described, for example, in commonly owned U.S. Pat. No. 6,925,440, (A) profile owners (i.e., who either own the profiles or have the right to resell the profiles on behalf of another profile owner) can provide a databank with access to visitors and their profiles, and (B) either (i) the databank enhances its existing profile on a visitor with a profile owner's profile information about the visitor or (ii) a profile owner enhances the profile it has on a visitor with the databank's profile information about the visitor, where the profile information is given in return for royalties paid for every later usage of the profile information for the delivery of targeted ads to the visitor based on the profile (for example).
Although the invention of the '440 patent provides a media property with additional information about its visitors, several possible challenges arise:
1. If a media property (if acting as a profile owner) wants to enhance the profiles available to it about its visitors and thus contacts a databank and provides it with access to the profiles, the media property might be wasting resources: First, the databank might have no profiles about the media property's visitors. For example, if the databank has no profile about a visitor, the media property would have provided the databank access to the visitor merely to learn that fact. Second, the profiles that the databank does have might be of no use to the media property because its sales force does not sell ads in the category in which the profiles belong. For example, if the databank has a profile about the visitor and it is a health-related profile, but the media property's sales force does not sell ads in the health category, the profile available from the databank about that visitor is of no use to the media property.
2. The media property (if acting as a databank) may be given access by a profile owner to many visitors to that profile owner's site for whose profiles the media property has no need, because the media property has no way of monetizing profiles of those kinds. For example, if a media property's sales force specializes in selling ads in the travel and financial services categories, there is no use in providing them with health, auto, and shopping-related profiles. In cases where a large profile owner makes profiles available to a media property, unless the media property has a very large sales force that specializes in selling ads in many different advertising categories, there is a significant probability that the media property will have no use for most of the profiles received.
3. A media property that receives profiles under the system of the '440 patent described here is committing itself to pay for every usage of a received profile. Because many of the ads (or, depending on the way the profile is transferred, all of the ads) are delivered by the media property after receipt of the profile, it is a challenge for the media property to track usage of the profiles. First, it is not clear which of the visitors (for whom the media owner received profiles) actually visited the media property later on their own accord as opposed to visiting via a redirect, for example from a databank or a profile owner to the media property without the visitor asking for such visit or being aware of it. In the case of a redirect from a databank's server or a profile owner's server, a visitor's browser would simply fetch a 1×1 transparent pixel from the media property's server following the redirect. Second, because it is not clear how many of the profiled visitors will appear later within the ad space of the media property, some tracking of the usage of the profiles by the media property must be established. The problem becomes even more complex when the media property receives the profiles from a databank, because the databank itself aggregates profiles from other profile owners and makes those profiles available to media properties, and it is not clear which of the delivered profiled visitors will visit the media property on their own accord (whether for the first time or not). In that circumstance, it is not clear how the databank will know which profile suppliers to compensate for usage of their profiles. The problem is especially complex when the databank has several profile suppliers providing it with profiles in the same category (for example, the databank may have 20 different travel sites, all allowing the databank to tag their visitors as “travel” visitors) and the databank gives to a media property all of the profiles from those profile suppliers within that category.
Although BT companies can collect profiles and deliver ads to the profiled visitors within low-value ad space that they buy from media properties, there remains the need, therefore, to provide collected profiles to media properties that will better monetize their low-value ad space by selling ads based on the profiles and delivering the ads within their ad space to the profiled visitors when those visitors visit the media properties and making a payment for the profiles to the profile owners who provided the profiles.
What is needed generally is a more efficient method of profile-based behavioral targeting advertisement placement services, particularly for improving monetization of electronic advertisement placement.